DHEC in the News: Hurricane Irma, opioids, Atlantic sturgeon

As South Carolina eyes Hurricane Irma, the Aiken County Emergency Management Division also is meeting this week about the storm in the event it impacts the state.

“We’re just making sure the County is ready,” Aiken County’s Assistant Emergency Manager Fred Wilhite said Tuesday. “We’re having meetings, because right now, it’s hard to predict where it’s going to go.”

Between the ages of 17 and 22, Deb Smith was institutionalized 13 times. She calls the time around 2010 and 2011, when she was 18 and 19 years old, her “lowest spot.” The “darkest,” she says.

Even at such a young age, she found herself abusing alcohol and other substances, unable to get clean. She had left school and her parents’ home and was living in foreclosed properties with others who, like her, found their daily lives to be a routine of substance use. After a few months of squatting at one spot, people would kick her out, fed up with her character when she was high. She’d moved on to the next empty house and empty friends. …

For more than a year, opioids became one of the ghosts that haunted the void carved out by her substance abuse disorder.